Shadowtown
by Warson Heyn
Summary: Six months after the film, mysterious events in an abandoned Seattle bring three men together. Their actions, past and present, may shape the future of the mecha world. Not as heavy-handed as it sounds. New chapter every week.
1. Part I: Another

_**Author's Note/ Disclaimer: **I started this one a long time ago, and-- like the terrible person I am-- didn't do a damn thing with it for about seven and a half months. It takes place shortly after the second act of the film, and was supposed to be a dark mystery sort of thing. That went out the window when I found out I can't write drama to save my arse, so I turned it into a sort of buddy-detective thing. Anyway, be warned that there is some language, innuendo, and mild violence in the chapters ahead, but I'm pretty sure I could squeak it by with a PG-13. And none of the actual **A.I.** stuff is mine. It goes to Dreamworks and Warner Bros., copyright 2001. But all of the original characters and text go my way, copyright 2002, Warson Heyn. Don't take it without asking. But feel free to ask. And do review me. Even if it is Flame, I dig feedback._

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_"Yesterday, upon the stair, _

_I saw a man who wasn't there. _

_He wasn't there again today. _

_I wish that man would go away." _

_~Anonymous_

** "S H A D O W T O W N" **

By Warson Heyn****

**Part I: "Another"**

_Prologue_

  
Those were the years after the ice caps had melted because of the greenhouse gasses, and the oceans had risen to drown so many cities along the shorelines of the world. Amsterdam, Venice, New York, forever lost... but not Seattle.

Yes, Seattle-- the birthplace of Starbucks, grunge rock, and a fad that came and went in the 2030's that involved dropping an occupied car from a rather high crane into a large air-filled cushion-- survived the rise of the oceans due to two feats of engineering brilliance that saved millions of people the trouble of having to move to the suburbs. The first plan seemed simple enough. There was a problem, and there would be a solution.

Problem: The water was coming into the Puget Sound and flooding the city. Solution: Stop the water from coming into the Sound. An intricate system of massive dams and canals that made the digging the Panama Canal seem like making a moat around a sand castle was hastily arranged and completed in less than ten years. It worked for a few decades, and the water in the Sound barely raised a foot... for a while, anyway.

Problem: The first plan was hastily arranged and completed in less than ten years, and was apt to give way at the slightest provocation. Solution: Don't move the water, but instead move the city. And where else would you move it except up? Two vast square platforms-- each eighty-five meters above sea level and five miles across --were constructed above the city, so that whenever the day came that the shoddy dams burst and the Puget Sound turned into the Puget Gulf, the city would survive. These incredible structures were built above (or around, depending on height)the existing buildings, but left room for urban expansion.

This was fine with most people, as the upper floors of most of the taller buildings stood above the 85-meter mark, and with little effort could the thirtieth story be converted into a lobby. The open space left on the platforms was snatched up quickly from the state and resold at an incredible cost. Nobody minded paying it to build huge skyscrapers. Besides, the ego of it all was just overwhelming.

Seattle became the world's city, like Manhattan before it. The city exploded with life. The peoples off all the drowned cities elsewhere came and lived there to witness something that their own homes had failed to do- defy all logic and stop the seas. Not thirty years after the completion of the towers a third platform was commissioned to bridge the gap between the two. Needless to say, this only spurred the budget, and increased real estate costs on the existing platforms. God Bless Capitalism.

No-one even stopped to think of the downside of it all-- of all the wasted steel and iron, and of the once beautiful city that now lay lightless and lifeless below the monstrous thing. Of course no-one thought of these things. Why focus on reality when you are building one very pretty little Coffee Table (which, ironically, is what the city came to be nicknamed)? Besides, one day the old dams will burst, and you won't even be able to see that any more. Until then, the city sits high and dry, looking, from a distance, like a Metropolis on stilts.

So now, sitting beneath the world largest metaphor of mankind's hubris, there is a wasteland. While overhead thirty million people go on with their crowded and superficially happy lives, there is a whole world beneath the Table that most people don't even know about... strike that: they know about it, but choose to ignore it. It is a dark world of crime and violence that's in nobody's jurisdiction anymore. Shadowtown only sees daylight at dawn, then spends twenty-three hours lit only by the fires that sporadically burn in the abandoned shipyards. Nobody comes down here unless they have a reason, and they'd better have a damned good reason. That or a a very, very bad reason.

It's usually a very, very bad reason. 

* * *

**_Day One: 1611hrs_**

In the aging office lit by two flickering fluorescents, the man who was known simply as "Leo" to all who knew him sat behind his desk. In one hand he held a burning cigarette, and the other propped up his chin as his elbow rested on the desk. His shoulder-length red hair fell over his face as he read over a stack of papers sitting on his desk. He was thirty years old and of medium build, and he had a temper that, when unleashed, was not unlike that of a six-foot tall hornet.

Fortunately, he had ways of curbing his anger (chain-smoking) and hadn't exploded into a real fit of violence for years. Still, there was the occasional tantrum, and the erratic, almost manic mood changes that earned him a certain refute amongst his hunters as being a little bit insane. This wasn't entirely true. Leo just liked to keep his boys on their toes. Or so he told himself.

Leo was one of the few people who called Shadowtown home. He spent most of his days and nights in a once-abandoned office building on Pike Street. It was one of the few "live" places in the all-but-empty city. The building was six stories high with a large moon-shaped light and the words "What About Us" painted on one side. The Flesh Fair Offices. The building was old even for Shadowtown standards. It dated back to 1930's, and had been renovated several times since. Leo's office was on the top story, facing Pike Street. He was the director of the Old Seattle Rogue Mecha Recovery Team. The _ROMREC_, as it was abbreviated, was simply a euphenism for Flesh Fair mecha hunters. The hounds. 

It wasn't a job Leo necessarily liked. He used to be a fairly straightforward businessman before joining the Fair five years ago. But, because Shadowtown was an unpoliced district where the sun seldom shone, and was almost devoid of humans, it was all but crawling with runaway and lost Mechas. That was why the Flesh Fair set up shop here. It was very discreet, and it was a lucrative business. People like Leo like lucrative businesses. 

It had been a relatively normal Saturday afternoon in Leo's Shadowtown offices. He was sitting behind his desk flipping through the pages of the Regional Demographics Report and idly humming the last few chords of "Let It Be." After a few moments, he threw the folder over his shoulder and into the trashcan behind him. _Why do they even bother sending me stuff like this?_ Leo thought, as he flipped a switch on his desk. A giant digital wall-screen turned on on the wall opposite Leo's desk. He put it on ESPN. The Yankees were losing. 

_Damn, _he muttered, _that's fifty bucks down the drain._

Just then, the door flew open. It was Kyla, his personal assistant. Leo quickly clicked off the screen, and pretended to look busy. "Freeman just passed by," she said. "He told me to tell you he got a call from Jacobs on Team Six." 

Russell Freeman was the Assistant Director at the ROMREC. He was twenty-eight years old, not particularly tall, black, and very articulate for his age. He functioned as a liaison between the hunters and Leo, and even though Russ was technically his subordinate, he and Leo generally worked as equals. 

"What did he say?" Leo asked. 

"I told you what he said," replied Kyla. 

"No, what did Jacobs say." 

"Oh… Nothing." 

"… he said nothing." 

"Yeah. He said absolutely nothing." 

"I see…" Leo said. 

"Well, Russ figures either he accidentally called us up, and left the phone on, or… something else." Her eyes shifted slightly away from Leo when he said 'something else.'

"Well, which do you think it is?" Leo asked. The hunters never called the office while they were out on their rounds unless either by accident or if something went very, very wrong. 

"Dunno," he said. "That's what he's going to find out. He'll call you when he gets to them."

"No," Leo said, standing up. "I'm going with him." 

"No," Kyla said, "He'll call you when he gets to them. You stay here and… do whatever the hell you do in here all day, because I know it isn't working… Speaking of which, are you done with the Demographics Report yet?" 

"Yes," Leo lied. 

"You're lying," she said. 

"I know." 

She must have noticed the discomfort her news had brought to his face because she suddenly changed tone. "Leo, it's nothing, okay? It's probably just a false alarm. Whatever was happening out there has stopped by now." 

"Yeah, you're probably right," he said. 

"Oh, and watch the end of the Mariner's game for him. He says he'll be waiting for the cash when he gets back." She turned to walk out the door. "The Yankees aren't going to win," she said over her shoulder as she closed the door. 

"The Yankees always win, Kyla!" Leo shouted. 

"Not against the Mariners!" yelled Kyla from outside. 

* * * 

Ten minutes later, the phone rang on Leo's desk. "ROMREC, Leo," he mumbled into the receiver. 

"Leo, it's Russ," the voice crackled in. 

"I owe you fifty dollars."

"What?"

"Mariners won."

"Not now, Leo, we've got a situation." 

Leo's stomach churned suddenly at the words. "…Did it happen again?" Leo asked, sounding slightly nervous. 

"Yeah," Russell said, "It's pretty bad. There are three of them out here, all knocked out, and the rest of them are nowhere to be seen. I haven't been able to make radio contact with anybody." 

"Where are you?" asked Leo as he rose from his chair. 

"I'm in the fairgrounds, over by the old monorail station." 

"I'll be there in ten minutes." Leo hung up the phone and threw on his knee-length tan-leather jacket. It was his trademark, or at least it would be if people knew who he was. On his way out the door he grabbed two pistols and a pack of cigarettes. He was afraid he might be needing all three. 

It was the third time in the past two weeks that something had taken one of his teams down. 

* * * 

Meanwhile, in the old World's Fair Grounds in southern Shadowtown near the base of the Space Needle, Russ Freeman stood bewildered, confused and scared. In one hand he held the cell-phone he had used to call Leo, and in the other, a twelve-gauge shotgun. Around him were the bodies of three unconscious Flesh Fair foot-hunters. And on the ground at his feet was a crudely spray-painted Teddy Bear. 

It was the same design found somewhere near all of the downed teams.


	2. Part II: Sweat

_**Author's Note/ Disclaimer: **I know I said it would be a week, but I decided the one chapter was just too bare to stand alone for that long. So here's the next segment for your reading pleasure. I'll have another one up soonish, and then we'll get into the once a week cycle. Oh, yes, there's some Joe stuff coming up, and I've never written Joe before. There are some people who would eat my head off if I screw it up so if anyone wants to beta chapters for me, give me an email (sarcasmo2004@aol.com). Again, none of the content from **A.I.: Artificial Intelligence** is mine. It belongs to Dreamworks SKG and Warner Bros., copyright 2001. All of the original characters and text go my way, copyright 2002, Warson Heyn. Don't take it without asking. But feel free to ask. Oh, yes, and please send me feedback. I crave it. It's like an addiction. But without the whole... addiction... thing._

_I'll shut up and let you get on with the story now._

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_"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed." _

_~Michael Pritchard_

** "S H A D O W T O W N" **

By Warson Heyn****

**Part II: 'Sweat' **

_Day One: 1629hrs_****

Leo arrived at the old World's Fair Grounds less than ten minutes after the phone call. He brought along with him about twenty hunters from the office who would be helping gather clues and search for the missing men. Leo stepped up to the place where Russell Freeman was standing, right next to the strange green graffiti. It was the third time he'd seen it, and he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. 

"I'll never look at teddy bears the same way again," Leo mumbled. 

"Leo?" said Russell glancing at his just-arrived supervisor. 

"Yeah?" Leo said as he lit another cigarette and placed it between his lips. 

"I'm a little freaked out." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." 

Leo took a long drag of his cigarette. All of the major cigarette companies now produced, by mandate of law, carcinogen free brands. They had by this point perfected them to where every aspect of them from size to flavor and all was exactly the same as the other "old-school" cigarettes. Still, Leo wasn't interested. He had smoked the cancer-sticks for sixteen of his thirty years, and he wasn't about to change that now. 

He glanced out into the darkness. This sector of Shadowtown used to be like a big park before the Tables were built. There was plenty of open space and grass, plus all sorts of giant street-sculptures everywhere. Once, the giant Space Needle had towered skyward less than half a kilometer from where they were standing. But it had been dismantled piece by piece and sold to some architectural firm from Tokyo. Leo imagined the Fair Park must have looked plenty nice in daylight, but now, in eternal darkness, the Grounds were eerie and foreboding. And with all the lights the Flesh Fair boys had brought with them, the place was about to be lit up like a giant target sign for whatever was snatching up the hunters. This, Leo also didn't like at all. 

"Leo?" Russell said. 

"Yeah?" 

"Got any ideas as to what in the hell is happening out here?" 

Leo shrugged and sighed. He glanced around. About half of the boys he'd brought along were heading out in small groups to search for the other hunters. They held twice as much firepower as they usually carried with them in case anything should happen. The rest of them had gone off to try to help the three men that were found at the site. 

"Leo," Russell said again after a pause. 

"Yeah?" 

"...Is that all you've got to say? 'Yeah?'" 

"Yeah," Leo said glancing at Russ. "Why?" 

"I think you have something more to say." 

"Yeah? And what's that?" 

"I think you're a little freaked out too." 

"Well, I'm not," he lied. 

"Yes, you are." 

"No, I'm not." 

"I can tell." 

"What?" 

"I can tell." 

"No you can't." 

"Yes I can." 

"How?"  
"You're sweating." 

"What?"  
"You're sweating. You're a little freaked out." 

"So I'm sweating.... it's hot out." 

"Leo." 

"Yeah?"  
"It's forty-five degrees out here." 

There was another long pause. Leo eyed Russell with a look of half contempt. Russell could win any argument, including those he had with Leo. That was part of the reason he was so good at what he did. He was level-headed and smart. And sometimes Leo hated him for it. Leo stamped out his cigarette. He turned towards a group of guards standing around a member of Team Six who was sitting on the ground. He hated it when Russell won arguments with him. 

"Russ," Leo said. 

"Yeah?" 

"I hate it when you win arguments with me." 

"Yeah. I know." 

Leo walked over towards the circle of men. He pushed past a few guards to get into the center where the Team Six hunter sat half-conscious on the ground. He held an ice pack up to his head, and was quite dazed. "Leo?" he said, turning to face his boss, "Shit, man, my head hurts." 

"Alright, Jacobs," Leo said quietly, "lift up the ice for a second." 

The guard slowly raised the ice-pack off of his forehead. Besides the reddish patch where the cold bad had rested, there was no mark whatsoever on his head. 

"It was a shock gun," said a young voice that Leo didn't recognize. "Got him right in the forehead. He doesn't remember a thing." Leo turned and rose to face the boy who had just spoken. He was young-- no more than nineteen --and wore a blue jean jacket with the Flesh Fair logo embroidered on the breast pocket. There was a camera slung around his neck. 

"Who are you?" Leo asked him. 

"Rob Keller," replied the boy with the camera. "They sent me from up top." He gestured up at the black steel ceiling above them. _Up top_ seemed to mean the Flesh Fair Arena on the Table above. 

"And why exactly was Rob Keller sent down here, because I really doubt it's to keep me company." 

The boy fumbled idly with the straps on his camera. "To... take pictures." 

"Then go away and take some pictures. Leave me and my men alone," Leo spat as he turned back towards the guard on the ground. He bent over and looked at the place in the center of Jacobs' forehead where the shock-gun had hit. He pressed his finger to it gently. Jacobs winced.

"Shit, Leo..." Jacobs mumbled "What the hell happened?"

"I'm working on it, man," Leo said. Suddenly, the concrete around him was lit up with a brilliant flash of white light. Leo snapped his head back around to see Rob Keller holding the camera up to his head. It whirred quietly as it reloaded the film. 

"Did you just take a picture of me?" Leo demanded. 

"What?" asked the boy with the camera. 

"It's a yes-or-no question." Leo snapped, taking a step towards him. "Did you just make that camera record my photographic image on a slide of film?" 

"There's no film. It- it's a digital camera…" 

"Did you take the goddamn picture?!" 

"Y-yes..." said Rob Keller. The small crowd of guards around him exchanged worried looks and stepped backwards. It was a bad idea to be too close to the boss when he was about to lose it. 

"Why'd you do that?" Leo barked. 

"I'm just trying to... help." Photographer Rob Keller had just gone very, very pale. 

Leo fished into the inside of his jacket. "Fifteen second head start," he said. 

"What?" 

Leo pulled out a silver revolver and brought it up to eye-level with the photographer. "Fourteen..." 

About one hundred meters away, Russell Freeman had just finished describing the distress call he'd received to a Flash Fair guard with a notepad. He turned around when he heard people yelling and running over by where Jacobs had been found. Thirteen seconds later he heard the first shot. 

"Aw, damn it, Leo," he muttered. He started running over in that direction, and he could now plainly make out Leo's figure firing the gun. As Russ charged headlong at him, he fired another two shots out into the blackness. Within a few moments, Russell knocked him to the ground with a textbook football tackle, and sent the gun clattering across the concrete. Russell stood up and glared down at Leo. "What the hell are you doing?" he shouted. 

Leo lay on the ground with the wind knocked out of him for a moment. He was laughing between his gasping breaths. "What'd you... do that for?" he gasped. "I coulda been shooting... whatever got Team Six... for all you know." He put his arm across his stomach and winced. "I think you cracked a goddamn rib." 

"Doubt it." Russell said, his arms folded across his chest. "What were you shooting at?" 

Leo got up on one knee. "Punk kid with a camera... from upstairs." 

"Oh, now that's intelligent." 

Leo turned up to Russell and smirked. "They were blanks Russ. I was just scaring him." He climbed slowly to his feet. 

"I hope you feel special, Leo." Russell turned around and faced the men scattered across the concrete park. "It's alright, everyone," he shouted. "Get back to work. Leo's just being an ass." He held out his hand to help Leo stand up. "That was pretty stupid." 

Leo took Russ's hand and got to his feet. "Well, how the hell was I supposed to get anything done with Jimmy Olsen flashing his goddamn Nikkon in my face?" 

Leo picked up his gun and walked over towards where the boy had dropped his camera. He brought his heel crashing down on it. The camera smashed into a hundred pieces. "Well, that's finished." He gestured for Russell to come to his car. "Come on," he said, "the boys will take care of everything else here." 

They walked over to the black car with the white moon panted on the hood. 

"I don't like that they're sending their boys down here, y'know," Leo said.

"What?" Russ asked. 

"That kid with the camera, he said he was from 'up top.' Those arena boys should mind their own damn business." 

"I thought you would want all the help you could get."

"Well, what they sent wasn't help." He held up the trashed remains of Rob Keller's camera. 

"Why exactly do you have blanks in your gun, Leo?" 

"I carry two guns: one hot, one with blanks." He opened the driver-side door of the car. "Sometimes you want to scare 'em, sometimes you don't, y'know?" 

"Yeah. I know." 

"And Russ?" 

"Yeah, Leo?" 

Leo sighed. "I'm a little freaked out." 

"Yeah," Russ said, getting into the passenger seat. "I know." 

* * * 

Mecha hunting was less of a spectacle in places like Shadowtown. There, "hounds" weren't on electronic motorcycles with big lights and guns, and there certainly weren't cameras and giant balloons everywhere. Instead, the process was more of a straightforward hunt. 

In Leo's Shadowtown district, for example, there were nine teams of seven members each who would, either at a tip or at will, go to different sectors of the city and search for the rogue mechas. They traveled on foot, and were armed with small electro-magnetic weapons used to slow down, subdue, and eventually, deactivate the mechas until they could be caged and brought up to the arena on the Table. These teams could bring in anything from five to fifty total rogues a day. It was Leo's job to keep the whole process well-oiled, and Russell's job to oversee the actual hunters. 

And now, someone had decided to start messing with their men. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good. 

Upon arriving at the offices on Pike Street, the two men went straight into Leo's office to begin discussing the possibilities, and what was next for their team. It would be several hours before either one would come back out.


	3. Part III: The Drawing Board

**_Author's Note/ Disclaimer: _**Okay, so it's been more than a week. I'm sorry. Really, I am. My DSL exploded (not literally... though I had a monitor explode once), so I've spent the last few days in the dark. This inconvenience came right on the heels of another one: a lung infection that put me in the doctor's office on my frikken birthday. This past week has been plenty... inconvenient for me. But I did manage to read Red Dragon. Helluva book. Read it now, if you haven't.

Well, it's here now. Chapter three. This chapter squeezes more conversational bickering into two thousand words than was once imagined possible. **A.I.: Artificial Intelligence** does not belong to me. It's from Dreamworks SKG and Warner Bros copyright 2001. This text does belong to me, Warson heyn, copyright 2002. Don't take it without asking. But do feel free to ask.

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_"Worrying goes down better with food than without." _

_~Jewish Proverb_

** "S H A D O W T O W N" **

By Warson Heyn****

**Part III:** **The Drawing Board**

_Day One: 2039hrs_

The last rays of a Shadowtown sunset's half-light crept in through the gaps of the vertical blinds behind Leo's desk, casting a grid of gray bars through the cigarette smoke. In the tattered leather chair behind the desk sat Russ Freeman. His eyes were focused on the ceiling above him as he slowly swiveled the chair back and forth in a small arc. His face was tired and emotionless from hours of thinking. 

"Gangsters," he suggested. "Big pack of punk kids from the Plate comes down here to do their little gangster thing. Boot-fight, Neuroin dealing, other kids stuff. Bunch of guys with Fair badges show up, kids panic, overwhelm the Hunters, drag off what they can, shock-gun the rest." 

Leo, in the meantime, held a cigarette between his lips, as he stood with his back against the wall opposite the desk underneath the overly flattering portrait of Lord Johnson Johnson-- "Big-J" as he was known to his employees. Leo's eyes were closed, and he was slowly, rhythmically hitting the back of his head against the wall. "No good," he said. "Bangers from the Table aren't stupid enough to go down there by the museums in big numbers. Too many of our boys out there. And anyway they definitely wouldn't keep doing it." He took another drag on the cigarette and then hi his head against the wall again. "Besides, the stun gun they got Jacobs with was way too strong for some little gangster. It was like a Policeman's stick. And all of those have GPS on them, so kids can't lift 'em" 

"Look, I'm just putting ideas on the table, alright?" said Russell, his eyes not breaking from the spot on the ceiling. "'Sides, it would explain the graffiti." 

"Nah, I already had people look into that one," Leo replied with another dull whack of his head. Seems like this Teddy Bear thing is totally new. Nobody's got any tags that look anything like it." 

"What do you mean, 'had people look into it?'" asked Russell. He had stopped his little chair-pivot too quickly, and was battling a mild head rush as he tried to focus on Leo's face. 

Leo fished into the pocket of his jacket and-- punctuated by another thud against the wall-- pulled out a palm pilot. 

"Always wanted one of those," Russell mumbled, and began rotating the chair again. Leo's head hit the wall again. "There are more efficient ways to hammer a nail, Leo," Russell said. 

"What?" 

"Your head-bang thing." 

"... Shut up, Russell." 

"Fair enough." 

Leo finally pulled himself away from the wall and attempted to return some pseudo-professionalism to the room. "Okay," he said with a sigh, "lets go over what we've got." He flipped the burnt-out butt of his cigarette into an ashtray by the door, and shuffled less than enthusiastically over to his desk and pressed a button. The digital wall-screen next to the door flashed on and showed a map of southern Shadowtown (it was actually an older map of Seattle from the days before the plates were built). 

Leo walked back over toward the wall. "This past week," he began, "three teams of Hunters went on routine trips to south part of old downtown to round up some iron." As he spoke, three lines denoting the routes of the packs began zig-zagging southward on the map. "All three teams get jumped en route somewhere near the old World Fair grounds. First by the Rock and Roll museum, then by the University stadium, then today's right by the Space Needle monorail station." The lines stopped crawling abruptly at the respective places on the map just as Leo had described them. 

Russell seemed unimpressed. "I like this," he muttered, "you got a visual aid and everything." 

"Shut up, Russell," Leo said. 

"Did you get someone to do this one with your palm pilot, too?" 

"Can I get on with the goddamn thing, Russell?" 

"By all means." 

Leo fished out another cigarette and lit it. "As I was saying, we don't know who got them. We don't know why they got them. We don't know what they plan on doing with those they captured. 

"What we do know," he continued, "is that they must be highly organized. They must have some serious funding, and they must have some serious technical help because they carry some heavy-duty hardware. They kidnap most of the group, and hit the rest with stun guns so they don't know what happened to them. We think they may be pretty territory-oriented, because all of the attacks happen in about the same place. We also think that they are targeting Flesh Fair workers exclusively, and that seems to be their prime directive-" 

"Shut up," muttered Russell. 

"What?" Leo snapped his head around. 

"You just said 'prime directive.' I asked you to shut up." Russell said matter-of-factly, still swiveling the chair back and forth. 

"Russ, I'm trying to figure this out, alright?" 

"I know," Russell said. "But do you really think that giving me your little _Law & Order _forensic presentation is going to get the damn thing figured out any faster?" 

Leo shot Russell a contemptuous glare. "Y'know, Russ, for someone whose job could be on the goddamn line with this little disaster, you are awfully laid back." 

"I know, I know, but Leo, man... you need to calm down a little. You're getting all stupid and wired and uppity." 

"Wired and uppity?" Leo asked with apparent frustration. "... Is that even a word?" 

"Yeah, right up there next to 'prime directive.'" 

Leo put his hands down on the desk and glared across at Russell. "I don't know how to make this any clearer to you. I'm unbelievably stressed out right now. Something is out there eating up my employees, and I don't know why. I don't know where fifteen of our boys are right now, I don't know whether or not they are alive or dead, I don't know how to bring them back, and I don't know whether or not whatever is out there is going to come waltzing up Pike Street to come get the rest of us! We have got to figure this shit out, and if we don't do something soon, the lives and jobs of us and about fifty other people could be in serious danger. I've got an awful damn lot to work on right now, and I think I have every damn reason to be getting 'uppity,' alright?" 

A silence fell over the dark room. Russell had stopped swinging the chair as Leo delivered his short speech. Now he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. "Shit like this never happened before Big-J got killed." 

"He disappeared," corrected Leo. "They never confirmed his death." 

"Ah, don't give me that glazed-over 'disappeared' BS. He was whacked and you know it. He knew how to piss people off, and someone-- an old creditor, ex-wife, some angry fan, anyone-- decided to make things critical." 

Russell took a deep breath and slowly stood up from the chair. He yawned and stretched his muscular arms. He stood silently for a moment resting his forearms on the back of the chair. 

Leo, in the meanwhile, gave an exasperated sigh, and walked back over to his post by the wall, and began the head banging again. 

Things were not going particularly well for the Fair in the last few months. First there was the near-riot at the Haddonfield show. Then there was Johnson's death. The boycott in San Francisco where nobody showed up for a whole week. The mysteriously disappearing funds in the overseas shows. And now these attacks on employees here in Seattle. Leo ran his fingers mindlessly through his long red hair. He had never expected to have to deal with stuff like this when he joined the Show five years ago. 

A few minutes passed by, ticked off by Leo's head thudding against the wall. The clock on the wall now read 8:45. The little amount of light that came from the sunset had already gone, and the yellowing old fluorescents were the only thing that stood between the two men and total darkness. 

"You haven't heard any good news from the boys yet, have you?" Leo asked. 

"Yes, I have," Russell mumbled, "I just wasn't going to tell you." 

"Shut up, Russell," Leo said as he walked away from the wall. He went over to the window and looked out it. From this vantage point, he could look out across the quickly sloping cityscape that lay between the Flesh Fair building and the waterfront, and could even see a glimpse of the harbor itself. Leo took the cigarette out of his mouth, and parted two of the blinds wider for a better view. The water on the Sound reflected the purple light of the dusk sky above. It was quite a beautiful sight, juxtaposed between the old abandoned buildings and the massive steel platform that framed it. Leo watched as the small waves sparkled on the violet surface of the water. 

He sighed again. _How did I ever get myself into this shit,_ he thought. Five years ago, it had all seemed so simple. He'd just sit at the desk, direct the boys, and keep everything running like clockwork. Easy as could be. The Fair was as profitable as it had ever been, and the job was exactly what he needed. It was basically the same thing he'd been doing for years, and it paid… well, at least it paid. He was his own boss and could run things exactly as he saw fit. Plus, it was so low profile it was practically invisible. Had to be the best possible way to keep himself hidden from-- 

He shook his head. Best not to think about things like that. 

He closed the blinds and turned around to face the back of the chair Russell sat in. "I'm ordering a pizza," he announced suddenly. 

Russell spun the chair backwards to face Leo. "What?" 

"I'm calling the Pizza Hut and ordering a pizza, Russ." 

"Are you kidding?" 

"I'm hungry, I want pizza, I'm calling the Pizza Hut." 

"Leo, no, like you said, we've got to figure this shit out first." 

"I think we should probably eat first, seeing as we've been locked in this room for about three and a half hours and have neither eaten nor come any closer to figuring this shit out." 

"And you think getting a pizza will help." 

"I think getting a pizza will make me less hungry." 

"Fine, whatever," Russell resigned. He turned the chair back around and began his methodic rotation again. 

Leo pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and dialed up the number of a Pizza Hut on the Plate above them. One of his few business connections with the outside world was the owner of this particular store, who would provide delivery to no-delivery zones (i.e.: Shadowtown) in exchange for free Flesh Fair tickets. While he was left on hold for a few minutes an awkward silence fell over the room. It was Russell who finally broke it. "Y'know I always wanted to try the pizza with the cheese in the crust," he said nonchalantly. 

"Sounds good to me." Leo replied. After a while, he added, "I really did like things better before Big-J got killed." 

"Yeah, helluva guy." Russell said without the slightest hint of admiration in his voice. "Like a hero to me, actually... A greasy, fat, balding, corrupt, twisted, old, soulless hero who was less of a hero and more like the owner of the company I work for and whom I have no aspirations whatsoever to be like." 

"Couldn't have said it better myself... Hi, Jimmy! It's Leo from the Flesh Fair. If you're interested, I'd like to hook you up with another month of our little deal..." 


End file.
